


Respice Finem

by arealrowdydirtyboy



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, Sad with a Happy Ending, a dollop of hisoillu, brief implication of child abuse, im sorry for like killing off everyone i swear it ends with the happy, undertones of killugon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28477767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealrowdydirtyboy/pseuds/arealrowdydirtyboy
Summary: a one-shot scenario of the world where the chimera ants won. the world is in ruins, and nearly all of humanity has died. gon, killua, alluka travel together, killua desperate to keep her safe. illumi desperately searches for killua, and comes upon his dead body instead.
Relationships: Alluka Zoldyck & Killua Zoldyck, Hisoka & Illumi Zoldyck, Illumi Zoldyck & Killua Zoldyck
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	Respice Finem

Illumi had dealt death with a black hand. Pristine alabaster muddled with the depth of dark voidless eyes, sweeping long black hair that trailed behind him like a cape of death. Hands poised, sharp, a dagger that became adorned with violent ribbons of red. He was the perfect picture Zoldyck, built and birthed for one purpose alone-- all other desires burnt like fleeting ash the first inhale he took, until no light bounced back out from empty eyes. He taught Killua the same, until deep oceanic crystals turned to a still swamp of blue-gray, muddled and dead, like his own.

Illumi dealt death as easy as it became to breathe afterwards without the guilt weighing down heavily on his lungs. It became easier every time, with every life he took from gushing, red bodies stiff with the expression of horror and desperation. At one point, he came to enjoy the mechanic routine of assassination jobs. He had long since lost the guilt, or the hesitance. Instead, dealing death became second nature. It followed behind him like a dark cloud, engulfing all in its menacing light.

Illumi, then, could not have expected otherwise, but to have the same death he dealt so easily eventually caught up with him.

He lay on the marble floor, colder than he had ever felt, as red gushed out of him in rhythm to the pulsing beat of his slowing heart. Illumi had never expected to live very long, considering his purpose to life was attached to a strong finality. If Killua were to die, and if the rest of the Zoldycks were to fall, there would simply be nothing else Illumi had, with nothing else to be done.

With the remaining strength Illumi had left, he turned to look out the window of the highest floor he was on, inside the building that once held lavish elegance to it, deteriorated and crumbled to ash and dirt and cobble, out the window and down at the destruction of the world.

The chimera ants posed a larger threat than he could have ever imagined-- they multiplied endlessly, the king sitting on its throne higher and stronger than it ever did with a cold unfeeling bloodlust, crushing everyone and everything below its heel like the human race was nothing more than an inconvenience.

They had tried to stop it. Illumi, including.

Illumi could care less for the human race as its whole-- so long as the Zoldycks, his family, carried on. The king had risen to pose as much as a threat to the world as it did to the Zoldycks, and Illumi had no choice but to step in. It was in the midst of battle that Illumi learned that the king had been in love with a human woman-- he knew, by the way the ant king embraced her lifeless corpse in his arms with nothing left inside him but the cold vengeful wrath that crept out of him like a gaseous explosion, leaving civilians and nen users alike trembling and falling to their knees with despair.

The world was in ruins, completely taken over by the ants, killing children, women, men, nen users alike. Streets lined with red blood and green, an ugly painting of death and destruction until society as a whole fell apart just as easily showing how it had always only been kept together by a thin strand of baseless associations and veiled distrust.

Illumi had avoided fighting altogether-- his sights set entirely on finding Killua. He was the heir, and in a world riddled with disaster and burning buildings and blood dripping on sidewalks and a woman wracked with sobs as she kneeled and held onto a small lifeless body, he would have no intention set on anything but maintaining the Zoldycks alive.

He had found Killua, eventually, inside of a nondescript building hidden away from the screaming, crying, death, destruction of the world. His body next to another familiar one-- the mountain boy-- their hands intertwined next to eachother as they lay side by side with half-lidded eyes, empty of life.

Illumi didn’t react to the sight. In a second onto the next second, he simply had no other purpose to fulfill. And so he pulled up a chair and sat, simply waiting as he stared away at the sight he had seen, burned into his mind and his twisted heart. 

Until finally, an ant found him sitting alone in the dimly lit room that held the death of his life’s sole purpose, his brightest candle snuffed away until his entire being was engulfed in nothing but darkness, and Illumi was no more than a cold empty hollow carcass.

Illumi looked at the weak-leveled ant and did nothing, defenses lowered without a trace of his powerful nen, until the ant snickered and delivered the blow Illumi saw coming from miles away. But it meant nothing to him. He gushed out a river of red, and even in the tingling numbness of his brain and body, he felt surprised that he held so much life inside him. 

Illumi fell to the floor, a foot away from Killua and the boy he had cared more for than his own family and life, a puddle forming around his head in a halo of black and red. With his remaining strength, he looked away from the sight of his small brother, to the horizon where the streets burned bright with crimson flame, and ash filled the air in dark, dark trails of smoke and soot.

With the light that never existed inside Illumi’s eyes, he felt his vision darken and felt a wet streak creep out from the corner of his eye and slide down to the red stained floor until the destruction was no more than a blur, muddled by the long forbidden tears that finally fell in its final terminal act of repressed emotion, broken.

And then, suddenly, in the darkening blur of his vision, he was overtaken by a bright white light that shone like a powerful beam, a holy light amidst indescribable darkness and despair. It shone through the hollow echo inside him, filling him in its warm glow.

And then, nothing.

  
  


-

“Nanika?”, Alluka spoke from inside herself, asleep and missing the warm embrace of her brother. Even with the world in ruins, there were those more powerful ants that had recognized what was inside her instantly, and tried to claim her just as big brother Illumi had.

Killua had fought tooth and nail alongside Gon to protect Alluka and Nanika, the warm protective arms of her big brother encircling her with the determination and desperation to keep her safe from the overwhelming danger the world faced. Killua had tried to protect her from the reality of their situation, but she knew. Mister Chairman had fallen to the Ant King, the Ant King had fallen in love with a human woman, and she had died in his arms, having been shot by a fatal bullet by a human soldier. 

These were the things Alluka knew, because Nanika told her, inside her mind space. She knew a lot more things that she usually did-- Nanika giving her an abnormal amount of knowledge that was shared with her in an endless stream of flashing images and words that appeared in her mind.

Alluka was confused and undoubtedly worried about the strange behavior Nanika was displaying-- the images and flashes and knowledge grew bright and strong and plentiful the closer she would get to a chimera ant, as if Nanika was reacting to the presence of the strange creatures alone, powers malfunctioning in a sense because of it.

Nanika showed her images of the future, too. 

In one of these images, Alluka had reacted with a quiet gasp of surprise and fear, and Killua and Gon looked at her with eyes bright with concern. She had been doing that often, and they did not understand why-- she wouldn’t tell them, they already had more on their plate than she could afford to add to. Alluka didn’t want to see Killua more worried and hurt as a result. Gon, too.

She loved them both, and the both of them were already war-battered and bloodied with the exhaustion of days of fighting and protecting weighing down on their shoulders. But still, Killua insisted on carrying Alluka on his back. She casted a smile down at him, from her position on his back, and Killua still had the strength to give her a weary smile back.

However, Alluka’s smile was riddled with a distant, haunted look, in reaction to what Nanika had shown her. In her mind, the image of Killua and Gon a ruined heap on the floor, their arms reaching out towards each other and hands intertwined together with a large puddle of blood formed beneath them, both of them with lifeless eyes the color of dull brown and dull blue, faces stilled and pale-- big brother Illumi was there too, a couple steps away, with a large hole taking the space of where his stomach should have been, head turned away with tears silently falling from his lidded eyes.

It was that night, when Gon, Killua, and her had found a sort of reprise deep inside of an empty tunnel, when they were setting up to get a moment’s rest, when suddenly a large explosion sounded from outside the tunnel and the two boys had shot up in alarm.

Killua scooped Alluka up in his arms, but he didn’t take her with him, this time. Instead, Killua took her further inside the tunnel and kissed her forehead, promising that he would be back as soon as he took care of whatever caused the explosion outside, and to have some rest. Alluka only nodded with big, bright, knowing eyes and gave him a small, brave smile. 

As Gon and Killua made their way out, Alluka knew that they would not be coming back. 

And so, Alluka curled up on herself and cried quietly for minutes until minutes turned into hours until eventually, she fell asleep out of exhaustion and loneliness and loss and retreated to the mind space inside herself, where Nanika lay dormant. Alluka had no powers of her own, hardly considered a Zoldyck let alone a human, with the lack of powers she had and the overwhelming abundance of them all at the same time.

She knew that much about herself-- she could not change the outcome the future held with her own strength. With all the strength of a scared little girl, Alluka reached out to Nanika from within herself, embracing her with small trembling arms as she wept openly onto her shoulder. Nanika looked at her smiling, deep dark eyes looking at her and saying nothing. Alluka looked back with bright blue eyes.

“Nanika-- would you be able to grant me a wish?”

Nanika held her same appearance, with the exception of her empty gaze permanently smiling and the dark bottomless abyss of her eyes. And yet, Nanika still was someone else-- a _person_. Nanika tilted her head in curiosity, holding Alluka’s determined, bright blue stare, until finally-- she responded--

“Ai.”

  
  
  


-

  
  


Everything Illumi ever knew flashed like a flicker of a movie reel in his mind at the blinding white light that overtook all his senses. In one moment, he was five years old, learning the assassin step as his father looked at him with disappointment at every miscalculated step, heavy handed as he punished him for every mistake. 

Then he was seven, learning to take a beating heart out of a living human chest for the first time, finally being able to do so without a single drop of blood falling, and it was the first time his father had looked at him with a small gleam of a smile, a single flicker of pride before it fell away to its usual harsh stoic expression like it had never existed there at all. Ten years old, he had finally made it to the 200th floor of Heaven’s Arena. 

Thirteen, he had met a peculiar, dirty red-headed boy in a circus within the slums of Meteor City where he had been sent to kill a run-away influencer. The freckled boy had caught what was meant to be a silent assassination in the act. He had looked at Illumi with a sort of curiosity and reacted with nothing at Illumi’s threats to keep him silent except for a smile and a laugh. Fifteen, he had met that same boy on another assassination job, the red-head in a field of dead bodies Illumi was meant to dispose of-- that time, Illumi had approached him first. 

Twenty, he and Hisoka had maintained a largely infrequent and loose, yet long-lasting alliance. By twenty-three, Illumi took the hunter exam where he happened upon Hisoka again after years of not having requested his aid, and where Killua had met the mountain boy that would come to ruin everything Illumi had molded inside Killua.

By twenty-four, Illumi had lost him. And then there was nothing, after that.

Except, when he re-opened his eyes, Illumi was standing up and in complete darkness. And-- he was alive. Illumi pressed a cold hand to his stomach without looking down at himself, expecting to find an empty gaping hole and spilt guts, and instead found he was wholly in one piece, put together by some unexplainable source-- alive, by some unnatural reason.

He looked around at the empty darkness he was in and pressed forward in any direction, having nowhere to go and nothing to do except allow his legs to carry him on autopilot, mind still reeling to catch up to his current state and location.

He blinked in confusion and a dull sense of alarm when he heard whispering all about him, surrounding him until the whispers turned into clear voices-- _Illu-nii._ It took him a while longer than it should have to recognize the voice as Killua’s, and when he did, Illumi’s dissociated mind caught up to him fast and hard.

He trained onto the voice as it began to fade away in a direction, and Illumi chased after it with a pointed concentration, hanging on to the voiced whispers like it were his ultimate lifeline left before he entirely gave up his will to do much else but rot away into nothingness-- the twisted affection he had for his young brother, the one and only Zoldyck heir, kept him running for what seemed like hours and days and years all at the same time, until finally, the voice calling his name stopped.

Then-- he saw the figures of Killua and Gon up ahead, their backs facing him as they walked forward holding hands. Illumi rushed at them as fast as he could, darting forward with a silent desperation and felt loss strike him like a heavy stone of dread in his stomach when he phased straight through them. Tendrils of smoke rose up from the figures of Killua and Gon, ghostly remnants rising and Illumi tried to grab onto the smoke with his arms, to no avail, until the figure of Killua disappeared right in front of him.

With eyes empty and lightless, Illumi simply stood still with a numb brain, fingers still tingling with the sensation of smoke passing through them as he clawed at the figure of Killua in the attempt to keep him from fading away. Illumi reeled from the numbing sensation of hopelessness until he became distracted by a familiar figure to his far right. Illumi walked towards it on autopilot, forcing his thoughts to shut away the idea of Killua being gone permanently, lest he fade away into smoke, too.

It wasn’t until the figure was a foot away that Illumi recognized the familiar locks of red hair sticking up in its familiar hairstyle. Hisoka slowly turned his gaze towards Illumi, and his eyes were wide in a kind of open, raw vulnerable confusion that Illumi had never recognized on the man before. He blinked several times at Illumi, as if he were a figment of his imagination, and glazed gold eyes sharpened until the two men were standing in front of eachother, face to face.

Illumi spoke up despite the empty hollow reverberating in his chest, already uncaring if not for the slight chance that if he was alive despite having been disemboweled, then that would imply Killua could be alive as well. 

“Are you real?”

Hisoka only looked at him in further confusion, not answering the question but stepping closer to him and slowly, slowly reaching a hand out to grab a lock of his hair in between two fingers. Hesitantly, the hand reached for his shoulder and squeezed, then he retracted his hand and pressed it over his own chest, as if in disbelief that what he was experiencing was real and not simply a dream.

The simple touch kept Illumi grounded in reality, strangely enough-- knowing that he was a physical presence and not just another ghostly apparition.

“How am I alive?”

Illumi looked away at the darkness all around them, engulfing them both as they stood together in mutual disquietude.

“We died.” He found it was a simple enough admittance on its own, a statement that felt more casual than it should have. Illumi still felt the effects of apathy numbing his brain, struggling to catch up to the fact he was being given a sort of second chance at life, without any answer to _why_ that was-- let alone _how_.

“I was killed by the Ant King himself-- so does that mean, we, this is the afterlife then?” Hisoka asked the question directed to nobody, but Illumi answered anyway.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that if we are still alive somehow even after dying, then Killua must be here as well. I must find him.”

  
Hisoka blinked in surprise at Illumi.

“Killua is--?”

“I must find him.” Illumi interrupted, not willing to hear the words out loud from someone else, even when he already knew it was true. “Killua... was also with the mountain boy before he..”

Hisoka understood with a solemn nod, no need for clarification, which Illumi appreciated, for once. Guided by nothing else but confusion and dread and the anguishing clutch onto hope, Illumi trudged forward with Hisoka silently following in tow, no need for words to communicate that they would stay together in whatever blank darkness of an afterlife they found themselves in. 

Illumi wasn’t sure how long they walked aimlessly through darkness for-- it could have been minutes, or days, or months, neither of the men were sure, but time felt eternal and meaningless and so they didn’t keep track. Not until exhaustion settled upon them both-- a timeless length of time stretched endlessly as they kept trudging forward to no destination but the chance that they would gain insight to where they were, why they were alive, who else could have been still alive.

They both came to the wordless mutual decision to stop, for just a moment, after the cruel and quiet realization settled that there would be nothing and nobody waiting for them.

“Do you think this is the end?” Hisoka spoke suddenly. They were both crouched down and huddled not too far from each other, taking a strange comfort in each other's presence-- a comfort that had never existed previously, since their relationship before their moment together in death had been defined by a loose alliance at most.

Illumi regarded the man next to him, who looked back at him with an uncharacteristic tiredness inside gold eyes-- the reflection of them showed Illumi’s eyes which held the same kind of tired Hisoka must have felt.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, after considering the question for a while.

Illumi was already so tired, and he allowed himself to feel comforted by the warmth radiating from Hisoka’s body-- a reminder of their physical presence in their elusive surroundings, a simple human need to feel the presence of another human being. Illumi could allow himself that much.

The two huddled closer together until their arms and legs pressed together. It was cold, getting colder, the longer they spent in the abyss. The warmth from their bodies was their only reminder that they still pumped blood and breathed in one piece.

“Killua--” Illumi whispered like a dying prayer. It was getting colder, freezing. They were freezing. He hadn’t even noticed when it had gotten so cold. But by the way Hisoka shivered against him and encircled arms around himself, he must have felt it too. It felt impossible to get up again, both of them resigning themselves to the frostbite.

“If this is the end, then, it has been a pleasure spending these last moments together.”

“It does not seem very sensical or fair, to be brought back to life only to die again, without any idea what the purpose was of our regained life, however.”

“I cannot say I disagree. But life can be cruel, like that.”

“Yes.”

There was silence, until Hisoka shuddered and spoke up again, voice quieter and having lost its usual baritone cadence.

“I will be making my leave first, Illumi. It has gotten rather cold, and I have people to greet on the other side.”

Illumi knew he didn’t have much time left either. He couldn’t feel his body anymore, and he knew if he were to look down at himself, he would probably find his limbs frozen together, attached to Hisoka's.

“Goodbye. I will meet you there, then, probably. If you see Killua first before I do, let him know that I will be joining him soon.”

Hisoka laughed. “Implying we will all be going to the same place.”

“I will bring Killua down to the pits of hell with me, and protect him from the fires, if that’s what you mean.”

Hisoka laughed harder, but it sounded tired and drowned out. “Well then, I may have to bring Gon, too. Then nobody can complain, can they?”

Illumi didn’t answer. Hisoka remained stiff next to him-- the in and out heave of his chest stilling and stopping with a final stutter.

Illumi didn’t take much longer to follow. Then, once again, everything turned dark.

  
  


-

  
  


Nanika was-- leaving-- fading-- disappearing into darkness right before Alluka’s eyes. She was inside her mindspace-- _their_ \-- mindspace. She had made her wish, and Nanika smiled at her with her usual void stare, but Alluka recognized the squeezing pull of her heart, the knowing and melancholic edge to her empty gaze.

_Nanika. Please, return things back to normal before the world fell to ruins. Please, don’t let them all die._

She had begged Nanika, bright wet tears staining the cloth of her robe-- the same robe she wore. Arms that encircled Nanika encircled Alluka back, and they were the same arms-- they were one and the same and yet different people altogether.

_I don’t want to be alone again._

Alluka had never really been alone, not entirely. Even when she was stored away in the basement year after year, even in complete isolation, Alluka never felt entirely lonely because Nanika was there with her. Nanika had always been there, and they would play together in their shared mindspace.

She loved Nanika, and Nanika loved her. And at the same time, they were one and the same, a precious part of herself she treasured and protected. So when Nanika had said her usual-- _Ai_ \-- and began to _disappear_ into smoke, Alluka felt the visceral sensation of having a piece of her ripped away and vacated.

With all the strength of a scared little girl, Alluka cried out for Nanika as her skin grew colder and colder and colder, the mirror image of her hair and face and limbs slowly, softly dissolving into tendrils of black smoke.

Their mindspace was pitch black and the sole concept of _nothingness_ , but Alluka swore she felt the physical presence of loss all around her, and loss felt like _cold_ and _freezing_. The tears that had fallen down her face harder were wiped away by Nanika's remaining hand, Nanika, who gave her a kiss on her forehead before she disappeared completely.

The final smile on her face was warm-- and all too suddenly, gone.

Alluka stood there, completely heart-breakingly alone for the first time in her entire life, and she wanted nothing more in that moment but to be within the warm embrace of her brother’s kind arms. She missed Killua with such a strong force in that moment, but she kept a brave face. She had lost Nanika in a single moment. She couldn’t afford to think about the imagery of Killua and Gon dead in her mind’s eye.

So with all the strength of a scared child, Alluka hugged herself and tried to sniffle back the tears that kept falling like an endless stream from eyes full of sorrow-- until finally, everything became engulfed in light.

The dark mindspace she shared with Alluka shattered. Where Nanika had stood before she disappeared glowed with a bright white light-- and the world shifted before her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, a familiar sight greeted her. She was in the basement of the Zoldyck manor again. All too suddenly, she understood what Nanika had done-- what she had sacrificed to fulfill her wish. Because this time, the Zoldyck manor had not been overtaken by the Ant King’s royal guards, the world was not in ruins, and this time, Alluka was completely alone.

Except now, although her heart ached with the loss of Nanika-- the fortified metal door to the basement slammed open, and in stepped the bright and lively figure of her brother _Killua_ , alive and smiling at her with loving eyes looking at her like she was the sun and the stars-- she knew the world had not been taken away from her.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> sweats  
> i sort of. just put on a playlist and wrote this without any actual direction of storyline so i hope it wasn't too all over the place. //
> 
> everyone lives in the end, credit to nanika taking her life for alluka's one and only wish.//
> 
> and in a final note, i hope you lovelies have a fantastic new year, love you all, stay safe <3  
> see you soon


End file.
